u/Glad_Ostrich_9709

First and foremost, you're free to disagree and have your own opinion, just don't expect me to care, especially if you saw the title, clicked anyway and chose to get offended by what you're about to read. I just need to rant this off for a second cause oh my fucking GOD.

So, I'm almost done with my first and definitely without a shred of a doubt LAST "let's save Treviso and see what happens" playthrough. Usually, I save Minrathous cause Treviso is pretty much worthless to the gods and handing them Tevinter on a silver platter is about the dumbest move you can pull from a long term strategic perspective, but after reading that you miss a lot of Lucanis content, even if you don't romance him, if you abandon Treviso, I got curious and chose to save Treviso for this playthrough.

Holy.

Shit.

Never again. I'd guess I'm pretty much at the end of the road as far as the path differences go (Neve's and Lucanis's personal missions done, eclipse about to happen) and it's fucking horrible. Turns out, the Lucanis content I previously missed out on is completely trivial time wasting bullshit that adds NOTHING to him. Like wow, I get a new, bland walkthrough quest stating the painfully obvious (who could have EVER thought Lucanis suffers from having been imprisoned and tortured for a year? 😱) and giving Rook yet another chance to play therapist, cause we really needed that one. And it doesn't even lead anywhere. We basically get to tell Lucanis "hey buddy, you need to let go." That's it. This could have been a fucking conversation scene at the Lighthouse! I didn't need to waste 10 minutes walking through a Fade version of the Ossuary just to learn what I already knew and give Lucanis the most generic fucking advice a person could possibly come up with.

Oh but there's more! You wanna know what else I previously missed out on? A bland, nothingburger travel portion at the beginning of Lucanis's Veilguard hero quest. You know how you usually just get dropped off right at the secret entrance of Villa Dellamorte if you save Minrathous? Yeah, now you get a 10 minute "walk across some rooftops and fight some Venatori" wind up that adds literally nothing essential to that quest! 😃 Ain't that fun! But hey, at least you now finally get access to that damn chest in the spot where you fight the Darkspawn champion in Treviso that you can't get to otherwise. Wanna know what's inside? An upgrade to Lucanis's worst weapon. It's now slightly less useless. Hooray!

What else? Ooooh yeah, you now get the chance to spare Illario! You know, Illario? The absolute fucking pisswipe that got Lucanis imprisoned? Kidnapped Caterina? Allied with the Venatori? All just so he could satisfy his own greed? The fucking little traitorous shitstain of a bastard that would actually deserve the most painful death you could possibly imagine at Spite's hand, but you have to settle for throwing him in a cell cause Lucanis cares about the man that actively tried to kill him for some reason? Yeah. You get to let him get off the hook now! Ain't that somethin! 🥰

Man, Neve lost her home, her friends, her hope and her apartment for this bullshit. Not only that, but she completely gives in to her cynical side and just stops believing that good in the world is even real. Commander Lenos gets away with his bullshit and the people of Dock Town are freely used as cattle for blood rituals all so Lucanis can figure out how to be besties with the fucking literal DEMON in him. Now that's a whooole other rant right there, but this post is long enough already.

Treviso can burn in all my future playthroughs. I'm never subjecting myself to this asswipe story path again. 😖 Anyway, angry vent session over.

Personally, I loooooove Minrathous. It's amazing. You get so many nooks and crannies to explore and the noir vibe hits hard for me. The set pieces look amazing. Treviso is an extremely close second for me for similar reasons, but it's not as expansive as Minrathous sadly 😖 Still a great area though.

The Necropolis and Hossberg are in the "fun and nice" category for me. I enjoy them, but they don't hit the spot for me as Minrathous does. The only maps I really don't like at all are Rivain and Arlathan. Beautiful as the scenery is, those maps are a bloody nightmare to navigate for me 😭 I completely stopped taking ❗- missions there unless the mark is close to a beacon cause I just can't be bothered with trying to find my way there 😖

Before I begin explaining my view on this, it might help you to understand where it's coming from. I've spent about 4 years of my life in international humanitarian crisis response. My colleagues and I were among the first boots on the ground when disaster struck, be that nature showing her teeth or armed conflicts starting somewhere. My time spent working next door to people actively shooting each other has shaped my opinion on these kinds of conflicts quite a bit, for better or for worse. Funnily enough, it has also influenced which ending I tend to pick in my yearly Mass Effect playthroughs.

When I say "I think Destroy is the most sustainable ending," it sounds pretty ridiculous at first, because it's the one ending where two entire races and one very good friend get annihilated. Any halfway sane and sober mind wouldn't consider a Thanos Snap style double genocide a sustainable solution to anything. However, it's the wider view I'm looking at here.

When it comes to wars, if you zoom out far enough and look at the grand picture, you can essentially break them down into 2 kinds: the kind where nation leaders can't decide who's winning the pissing contest and start throwing soldiers at each other to settle it, or the kind where 2 or more entire people come into conflict that spans their entire societies and cultures and creates a deep rift between them.

In Mass Effect, at least according to the Catalyst, we are dealing with the latter, so that will be the basis for my argument.

The Catalyst presents the endless conflict between synthetics and organics to us as a sort of empirical truth, almost a natural law even. Synthetics will always rebel against their creators. Synthetics will always wipe out organics. Control and Synthesis seemingly offer the best solutions to this, but here is where I begin to question if that's really the case.

The thing about these deep, culturally based conflicts that have entire people at each other's throats is that you simply can not sustainably solve them by just telling the involved parties to knock it off or simply hand them a solution, wash your hands and walk away. People need to actively work it out for the generation that comes next, because if they don't, they won't have satisfactory answers, and that is incredibly important. If a father's answer to his son's "why aren't we fighting them anymore?" is "Because we signed a treaty that says we can't," that does nothing for the son. That just gives the son a reason to question things more and pick up a gun faster.

Active reconcilation is immensely important in conflict resolution. Truth, accountability and empathy are needed for that process in families as much as between nations, and are not provided if a fence is put up between warring parties and they're told their conflict is now over. Of course, it might create a ceasefire. It might even end the war for the rest of the generation if the ones that fought until now are tired enough, but it doesn't calm radical elements on either side, and it doesn't give the next generation asking questions about their national and cultural identify a solid enough reason to not throw oil in the embers.

That is exactly where I believe Synthesis and Control fundamentally fail: they remove the space and agency for that necessary understanding to grow and take root.

Synthesis is exactly what I mentioned earlier: a solution simply handed to all parties involved without their consent or understanding. They did not choose this new coexistence, they were merely forced into it. Temporary peace CAN come from that. We have more than enough examples for that in real life. We also have more than enough examples that it doesn't last. Regardless of what the writers have EDI and the Catalyst say when you choose this ending, I simply can't suspend my disbelief enough to actually see their eternal harmony and galactic peace fantasy be true. I've seen the exact opposite happen too many times.

Control isn't much better. It puts Shepard in the shoes of a tech god that makes sure everyone behaves like the galaxy's most overpowered helicopter parent. Thing about a benevolent tyrant is that he's still a tyrant. Control basically does the exact same thing as Synthesis, only people keep their own DNA. It takes away the possibility for real understanding to grow by putting someone in charge who will forever keep tight reigns on the process. The galaxy was given the biggest "This is over, go to your rooms!" and that is supposed to bring sustainable peace? Again, I can not suspend my disbelief enough to actually think this would last more than a few decades.

Destroy on the other hand is the only ending that returns the possibility for real growth and true conflict resolution to the galaxy. It completely removes the Reapers as the way too invasive moderation element and provides the people of the Milky Way the chance to come to their own understanding, on their own terms. No Shepard lording over everyone from the background, no fancy new DNA apparently just coding harmony into everyone's systems. It allows peace to be what it MUST be if it's going to stick: a choice.

Will there be new conflict? Yes. Of course. Destroy isn't a solution. Destroy only provides the best starting point for a solution: a galaxy where the Reapers don't murder every species advanced enough to start creating sentient synthetics. A neutral ground for that conflict to actually take place and come to a real resolution.

The story of the Geth gives some hope that this resolution will be a good one. We don't know what the Geth would have been without the Reapers, but we do get glimpses enough to speculate. The Geth never sought to destroy all organics, as the Catalyst said. The Geth also never rebelled against the Quarians. They didn't start any of the wars they were involved in. If synthetics like this can exist, who's to say the Catalyst wasn't simply wrong? Who's to say synthetics like this can't exist again?

Nobody knows. However, Destroy allows a future where that question can be answered without the answer being already dictated, and that is the important part.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

I'm helping this dude grab some achievements but I'm getting kinda tired of monsters running away cause I don't have arena investigations on the level he needs 😫 He's almost AR 161 now, so the next thing I can take him on is level 180 investigations.

Anyone here got any arena style (Arena, Forlorn Arena, Infernal Springs) investigations on that level (and maybe some on level 200 cause I only got like 3 there 😅) I could snatch? Especially looking for investigations with multiple negative limiters. Maybe not "faint 1 time" tho and preferably no multi mon hunts, but I'm not too picky there.

Also I'm in Germany, so if you're like in Australia or something, we probably won't be able to play cause of timezones.

So. How's it lookin fam?

Finally gonna start learning Charge Blade and Hunting Horn. Any uncommon advice you can give me that I wouldn't find in a typical guide? Build advice, rookie traps, etc? Veteran at the game itself, but completely new to both weapons. Never even swung them around in the training room.

I need some fellow female energy on my hunts. No problem at all with all the dudes I've met, but it'd be a nice change of pace to not have every multiplayer session I join/start turn out to be a complete sausage fest 🤣🤣

About me:

Veteran of the game, got over 1,600 hours clocked. HR 999, MR 850, AR 290. Glaive and lance main, some experience with HBG and LBG. Verrrrry casual player. I don't speedrun, I don't min-max, I just play however I want. Also always happy to help with everything. Fun fact: Primordial Malzeno is my most hunted. Always down for kicking him around 💅

I'm in GMT+2, usually online between 5 and 10pm. I speak German and English 😁.

What I look for:

Like I said, just a fellow chick to go beat up giant monsters with now and then. Rank etc. really doesn't matter as long as you've at least reached Master Rank already. Definitely should have a mic/headset and be chatty cause I absolutely am and you gotta keep up 🤣 Also absolutely must be at least in your 20s. I'm 34, I don't socialize with teenagers anymore, it's hella weird.

Lmk if anyone's interested ☺️

What kind of weird mutant cat hybrid creature with twitch muscles that would make a traumatized war veteran look calm could possibly catch the freakin Glacierfish at fishing level 6??? I'm fishing level 14 and don't stand a chance. Up, down, up, down, gone. 3 seconds, that's it. That's the chance I get. Fishing level 6, right. Also love how even the wiki says it's really more about luck with that thing than anything else.

Guess it's finally time to build the statue of blessings. Here's hoping the blessing of waters will save my sanity 😵

Aight, thanks for coming to my rant. As you were.

Lance is truly one of the, if not THE most underrated and underappreciated weapons in Rise, and while I love my pokestick with all my heart, I really understand why. It's slow, it feels a bit clanky, it's overall really non flashy. Unless you learn to truly master it, which takes a good bit of time, and you start dancing with monsters rather than fighting them, it's overall a really simple weapon that will only ever attract a certain kind of crowd. That's honestly valid and I totally get it.

Here's why you should still put a lance in your arsenal.

You wanna know what this weapon has that no other weapon in Rise does? The most powerful shield in the game. Except for a few select, ridiculously powerful moves, there's NOTHING a lance can't tank. And if you slap the right decorations on it, you don't even have to actually do anything. Sure, you can learn to Insta Block and Power Guard all day long if you want to. Or you equip Guard 5 and Guard Up 3, hold down one button and just wait until the monster's done with its tantrum. Equip Embolden and you won't even break a sweat doing it.

And that right there, that ability to just stand and block and wait, that is incredibly, and I can not stress this enough, INCREDIBLY useful if you wanna learn a monster, especially the ones you struggle with.

A lance with a fully souped up shield will allow you to learn attack patterns, ranges and telegraphs like no other weapon, simply because 95% of the time you don't have to worry about reacting. You just stand still, block and watch. It can help you take the panic out of a whole lot of fights. You'll realize that a ton of monsters really aren't as fast and chaotic as you think, and you will learn things that you likely wouldn't have discovered otherwise. For example, did you know Amatsu's twin thunder beyblades will entirely miss you 100% of the time if you simply stand still? Yup. Wouldn't have known that without my trusty kebab stick.

Grab yourselves a lance, ya'll. You won't regret it.

👍😁